


Stay

by TheBritishGovernment



Series: 00Q [11]
Category: Skyfall (2012) - Fandom
Genre: Angst, I'm so sorry, M/M, no happy ending
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-06-19
Updated: 2015-06-19
Packaged: 2018-04-05 04:43:10
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,640
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4166316
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TheBritishGovernment/pseuds/TheBritishGovernment
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Based on <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1nP3XB7hrFo">Stay</a> by Hurts.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Stay

Bond was not good at relationships. It wasn’t that he was too busy having sex with anyone who showed an inkling of interest to think about them. The idea had appealed to him when he had been younger and more naïve, but that hope had drowned in Venice. He gave up on the idea of relationships as anything other than pressure points on marks and forced himself to ignore anything that might lead to him having such a pressure point. That’s why when he found himself attracted to his Quartermaster his first instinct was to just sleep with the man and get it out of his system before it tried to morph into something worse, like affection. 

Q, on the other hand, did not see it that way. He refused to be another notch in Bond’s bedpost and Bond was stuck on in the cold. Bond, of course, found other people who looked strikingly like Q, of both genders, but the fondness for Q continued to grow. It was like some sort of sick joke that his mind had taken to playing on him. The thought that Q and Bond could be happy together continued to circle in his mind. That Q would always be there when Bond got back because he was tied to MI6 just as much, if not more than any agent. That Q already knew what Bond did and stood by him through it all. Q would be there and Bond could have the best of both worlds.

The hope stirred in Bond despite his best efforts to smother it under as many layers of self-centered arrogance as he could manage. It didn’t help that Q seemed more and more interested as time passed and it wasn’t long before Bond found himself being propositioned by his Quartermaster and saying yes before he knew what was happening. 

To Bond’s absolute horror he’d had a good time even with the absence of sex. 

Four weeks and one deep cover mission later the sex was no longer absent. It was hard and fast and needy. Bond fucked into Q with every ounce of energy he had left while Q held tight to his shoulders and scratched angry red lines down his back. 

Four more dates that ended the same way and Bond still couldn’t get his fix. And that’s how Q and Bond fell into a relationship. Six months before Q said the first “I love you.” Bond didn’t say it back. He didn’t know what to say, but Q seemed okay with that. He seemed content for Bond to just know that he loved him. 

Bond wanted to tell Q that he loved him, but there were so many reasons not to say it, so many reasons not to give that last piece of his heart over. He couldn’t have named them out loud if he wanted to, but they swirled in the pit of his stomach whenever he so much as saw his boyfriend. The worlds wouldn’t form on his tongue even when he willed them to when Q did something particularly silly before smiling brightly at Bond like he was the only thing in the world.

Before too long it started to wear on Q. Bond could see it in his eyes when he looked at him. They would crawl into bed together and Bond would wrap his arms around Q’s waist and hold him close and try to get the words in the air, but he couldn’t. Eventually Q stopped curling closer to Bond.

* * *

The rain was pounding on the windows of the car when Bond got back from a mission in the Brazil. He got out of the cab to see Q standing on the steps of the flat closing the door behind him with a backpack slung across his back. His hair was matted to his face and his glasses were dotted with water.

When he saw Bond his face flashed a million emotions, mostly hurt and shock and a little bit of anger before it set into a passive look with empty eyes. The same look on his face when he pronounced agents dead. 

“I didn’t think you were back yet. My apologies. There’s a note inside on the counter explaining,” Q said before stepping away from the door, but sidestepping Bond. 

“You’re leaving,” Bond said. It wasn’t a question. He knew that look. He knew what a bag over one shoulder meant. He didn’t need Q to say it. A part of him, a sick part that he wished would shrivel up and die, felt vindicated. He’d been right. Q was leaving just like everyone else, but Bond knew he was leaving because of him, because of that part of his mind that felt vindicated.

The agent wanted to tell Q that he needed him. That he wanted him to stay. That he loved him, but he couldn’t. He might have gone into shock. He was half yelling at himself and half trying to figure out how to get Q to stay and for them to talk it out and for them to be okay. His mind was so swamped that he didn’t even hear Q say yes and missed Q leaving all together. When he came back to himself he was soaked through to the bone and alone with a million strangers on the street with him.

It was weeks before Bond was sent back on a mission, no matter how much he begged and pleaded with Eve and told Mallory that he needed to go out. During that time Bond fell back into his usual routine after someone left him. Drinking and fucking until he couldn’t see or walk straight. He was hung over every morning and drank until the wee hours of the morning when he stumbled back into his apartment long enough to pass out on the couch.

He never went anywhere near Q-Branch and when he did see Q, once outside Mallory’s office, he couldn’t look him in the eye and moved out of the way without saying a word. Q didn’t say anything either and the look on Eve’s face was the most shocked and broken thing Bond had seen in a long time, Bond could only hope she wasn’t reflecting his expression. 

Finally when he was sent out again Bond was set up on R’s coms and she dealt with the mission. It should have been a quick in an out mission without any complications, but from the start something had been fucked. 

Bond was captured in a matter of hours. They hit the side of his head, lodging his earpiece so far in his ear that he lost his hearing. He couldn’t hear R yelling in his ear, nor could he hear Q taking over the coms and a moment later he was unconscious so it really wouldn’t have mattered anyway.

* * *

They wanted information, that much Bond could tell. Everything else was a blur of pain. What they wanted to know about Bond couldn’t have said even if he wanted to. His life started to slip from his fingers and he still couldn’t hear Q’s efforts on the line that he kept open just in case. His capturers had found every other tracker, but some how missed the earpiece. That or they just couldn’t get to it. 

It was what Bond thought might have been the third or fourth day when he started to slip. He had always been able to withstand whatever someone threw at him because he wanted to survive. He needed to live. There was more work to be done, but he was having a hard time finding that motivation, that will to live when he was locked in the basement missing half his hearing. 

He was too old to be an agent anyway and now his hearing was gone. He could take an office job, but he’d rather die in the field than become like Mallory.

Plus it would really piss off his capturers if they killed him before he could tell them anything and that was the best he could hope for at that point.

The only thing that caused Bond to hesitate was Q. Lovely Q who didn’t deserve to be left like that. Sweet Q who shouldn’t have fallen in love with a double-0 in the first place. Magnificent Q who fell in love anyway even though Bond never gave back anything that he deserved. Perfect Q who Bond just didn’t deserve. And maybe that’s what did him in. Maybe that’s the thought that let him let go. Maybe the reminder that Q and Bond weren’t together anymore. That going back, that living meant seeing Q move on and Bond was sure that had to be worse than death. 

So he whispered what he never could. He repeated it over and over in the dark empty room where they were keeping him between bouts of torture. He repeated it like a chant as he felt himself fall away and his voice became horse from even trying to speak that much after days of only screaming. 

On the other side of the world Q sat at his computer in the middle of the night, holed up in his office as he had been for days while he tried to track down Bond. The line was always open and Q was always listening and when Bond started talking, when Bond started repeating the words he had longed to hear for so long Q knew it was the end. He whispered his own chant of “no”s and “please”s and “don’t you dare”s. He said he didn’t want to hear it like that. He said it over and over again until Bond’s voice faded into nothing and Q was left with the words echoing in his mind.


End file.
